Review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) by Pree S — 01 Mar 2015

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a bloated film which is an obvious example of a film trying to do too much with too little content to use. The strange thing is, the opening scene is actually one of the film's best, which shows what happened after the opening sequence of the film's predecessor, The Amazing Spider-Man. We follow Richard Parker (Campbell Scott) and his wife, Mary (Embeth Davidtz) trying (to no avail) to escape from the villianous empire that would be Oscorp, headed by Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper). The pair board a plane to escape Oscorp, but on the plane they are ambushed by a hijacker sent to assassinate Richard. He succeeds, obviously, as their son, Peter (played brilliantly by Andrew Garfield, one of the few bright spots of the film), ends up growing up with his aunt, May (Sally Field) and his uncle, Ben (Martin Sheen). I just noticed this, but a strange trend with superheroes, especially movie superheroes, are always orphans. You name it: Daredevil, Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man... none of them have parents. Extra motivation, perhaps?

Anyways, after this brilliant opening, we cut to a... strange scene with the Rhino, also known as Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti), stealing a van filled with plutonium because... why? Why? For money? Seriously, you had to choose plutonium? A very fast car containing plutonium. Where does that ring a bell? OK, back to the chase. So, during the chase, Rhino endangers quite a few citizens, including Oscorp's own Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), whom Peter calls his "pal" afterwards, leading Dillon to become obsessed with Spider-Man, partially contributing to his feelings toward Spidey after his... er, transformation.

So, Peter is having conflicted feelings about his love, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), who he has barely kept out of his life after the death of her father, Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) at the end of the first TASM, due to the Captain's insistence that he did. He begins to see visions of George everywhere when he starts thinking about Gwen, which would make sense and all that, except that at the end of the first Amazing Spider-Man he was seemingly over the death (Promises you can't keep were apparently the best kind to him), so it doesn't really make sense that he would be back to where he was immediately after the "Leave Gwen out of it" quote from George before he died. That was a very long sentence. Back to the review!

Apparently, Norman Osborn is terminally ill with a hereditary disease, and his son Harry (played by a very miscast Dane DeHaan) is feeling its affects, for he is at the age where it first starts. We get research, transformations, him meeting Peter, friendship time, breaking friendship time, more transformations, and more blurry filler in between, punctuated with Dillon falling into a sting-ray vat (or something of that matter) at Oscorp and becoming a bright blue beast that is Electro. Dubstep time!

After Dillon's "shocking" transformation (a-haha-ha-ha), he gets caught on surveillance cameras by Oscorp officials who vow to never let this get out into the public. They send Dillon to the Pentagon, where he is interviewed. Following a few of these interrogations, he promptly escapes. Oh no! This all leads up to a strange battle between him and Spidey in Times Square which involves, yes, Electro's own Dubstep theme song, awkward conversation between the two combatants, and electric hand-rails. You heard me!

Meanwhile, Harry's getting sicker, so he asks Peter for a blood sample to cure him! Bad idea. Both Peter and Spidey refuse, so Harry hates them both. He then is informed by his assistant, Felicia, of equipment that could help him. Okay, sure. He finds some suit that a), fits him, and b), restores his health! Why couldn't Norman have used this, huh? So, anyways, this all leads to a clock tower, where Peter first beats Electro to the tune of a very metallicized "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" ("I hate this song!", proclaims Peter), and then, for good measure, fights Harry with Gwen at the TOP OF THE TOWER! Of course, Gwen is saved from an imminent strike with the floor after she falls from the top of it. Peter then defeats Harry.

This movie is a bloated, messy film with no real character development aside from very abrupt changes from the villains' original forms to their alter egos. I do not recommend seeing this film: it is my least favourite Spidey flick since 2007's Spider-Man 3.